The emergence of the Internet and the reliance by businesses and consumers on the transfer of data in an increasing number of daily activities requires that telecommunications networks and components deliver ever greater amounts of data at faster speeds. In telecommunications networks, data packets can be directed through the network by a series of routers and switches. At each router/switch in the network, data packets must be routed from an incoming transmission line to the proper outgoing transmission line so that data packets can be correctly communicated through the network. In current systems and methods for routing optical data packets at a router/switch, optical data packets are transferred from ingress data ports to the appropriate egress data ports via optical cross-connects or other such devices. In these systems, when a data packet arrives at an optical router/switch, the data packet is sent directly from an ingress edge unit through a cross-connect (or similar device) to the appropriate egress edge unit based on the routing information contained in the data packet's header.
In current routers, however, the connection between an ingress edge unit and egress edge unit typically does not change. Therefore, if there is an unexpected increase in traffic going to a particular egress edge unit, current routers cannot effectively allocate more router capacity to links between the ingress edge unit and the egress edge unit to which the increased traffic is bound. Additionally, in current routers/switches, data traffic can not be routed to intermediate edge units in the router/switch prior to being sent to the destination egress edge unit. Because bandwidth can not be reallocated between ingress interface ports and egress interface ports and data traffic can not be rerouted to intermediate edge units, current routers/switches have no option but to drop excess traffic. Furthermore, because data traffic cannot be rerouted to the intermediate edge units, if there is a fault on the links between the ingress edge unit and egress edge unit, data traffic bound for the egress edge unit must also be dropped. Thus, current routers/switches can not adequately compensate for permanent or transient increases in traffic or for the failure of links within the router.